Hi, in the recent GW podcast you were asked about max tire pressure for wider tires.
Zach and Dave said something like: “you won’t be anywhere near the max tire pressure anyway, especially on wide tires”.
But, I thought one of Ronan’s findings from his tire testing was that even he (moderate weight rider, light bike) was at the maximum pressure, and would have wanted to test even higher?
I could be wrong, but interpreted what Zach and Dave said re: wider tires as being about tires wider that what is fairly standard now. I also don’t think they’re referring to pressures set to minimize rolling resistance in racing conditions or for those looking to optimize speed on the bike.
The other thing to remember is that Ronan and John Buckley’s testing was one set of tests. It was a great test, but remember Ronan called the testing “proof of concept testing”. He further said that the test provided no magic number to make faster (possibly referring to tire width and pressure). To get anything approaching definitive conclusions, you need more testing and different approaches to testing. No test or experiment is definitive. It’s the consensus for the data from many and varied testing that we look for.
The one truth that does exist is that if you’re running pressures very near the max pressure for a given size tire, especially on hookless rims, you might want to go up a tire size.
Ronan and John Buckley’s testing was excellent and it will no doubt get even better. Hopefully it will inspire other groups, people, etc to do some equally excellent testing.
Right after the point where I typed this, they did mention it, and pointed out that comfort and grip would be much reduced at Ronan’s pressures.